Bartok’s For Children series, although a pedagogical work, contains little pieces which were partly also designed for concert performance. The later Mikrokosmos is in this respect different since it was conceived as a special piano method and also because the first two volumes of the altogether six volumes contain simple exercises and studies never intended for the concert hall. The composer himself pointed out this difference in a lecture recital held at American Universities and Colleges in the early 1940s. It was during this period of his voluntary exile in the United States that he discussed with his publisher, Boosey and Hawkes, the possibility of a new edition of this series composed three decades earlier and unavailable on the market in the US because of the war. The version which Bartok prepared for publication in 1943 was in fact a partly revised, almost a lightly “translated,” one directed towards an international, first of all English and American public, unfamiliar with the history and folklore of Eastern Europe. It was finally published in this revised form in 1946, shortly after the composer’s death.

Classical Music

This is the first CD for the Trio Atanassov, an award-winning and upcoming trio from France.

This new release is David Jerusalem's debut album. He has chosen a program focusing on the music of Franz Schubert and Carl Loewe. David Jerusalem, born in Munich in 1985, finished his education in 2010 at the Hochschule fur Musik Nurnberg. Then, in 2013 he graduated from his "Konzertexamen" with honors at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Dusseldorf studying with Prof. Konrad Jarnot. He rounded out his formal education by participating in numerous masterclasses across Europe. Jerusalem sung several roles at the Kammeroper Munchen between 2006 and 2009, and in November of the same year he sang the role of Astolpho in Vivaldi's Orlando furioso at the Prinzregententheater Munich in a production by Christof Nel and conducted by Michael Hofstetter. In concerts David Jerusalem has already been heard at the Meistersingerhalle Nurnberg and at the Philharmonie am Gasteig Munich with the Bach Chor and the Bach Collegium Munich singing Mozarts Requiem conduced by Hansjorg Albrecht.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This new release showcases Eugene Ysaye’s Six soantes pour violon seul, op. 27. An exuberant product of the Roaring Twenties, they are played on the 1735 Ex-David/Midori Guarneri del Gesu violin, a superb instrument that I wish I owned. The sonatas are joined, in a time-travelling leap forward to the hypermodern era, by V. E. Kauzner’s own composition, the Sojuchameleon for violin and field recordings. It was recorded in the zen-like atmosphere of a monastery, and complements of the release’s title, which campaigns for the introduction of a noise tax in urban areas. Kauzner first heard the Sonata No. 3 “Ballade” from the Six sonates op. 27 in 1999, and was enchanted by its sonorous beauty. To him, it sounded like the wind. After years of performing all six sonatas, he decided to record them. However, he came up with very little information about Ysaye’s life. Only one book was ever written about him, but Carl Flesch described him as the “violin incubator of Europe,” and “the most outstanding and individual violinist I have ever heard in my life.”

Siemens AG and the Orchestra Academy of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester are linked by a partnership spanning many years. What began with the family of the firm's founder Werner von Siemens, has continued across the generations through to today's company. The intensive fostering of young talent, be it in science, research, art, culture, business or technology, is today Siemens' credo, one that sees the company live it's social responsibility in a sustainable manner. Siemens can look back on a long tradition in the promotion of music in particular. Now, the Siemens Arts Program is going still further in this direction by initiating it's own projects, in which new work is created in direct collaboration with artists. The focus here is on contemporary visual arts, cultural education and classical music. The present recording, which also came about within this framework, offered the Orchestra Academy of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester and it's young scholarship holders the opportunity to record an album under exceptional production conditions, bringing harmony to the well-known cello repertoire with a technically innovative audio method. Intensive collaboration between the Orchestra Academy and the Siemens Arts Program, it's artistic director Stephan Frucht, the Bayerisches Staatsorchester solo cellist Jakob Spahn, and the Immersive Audio Network IAN, has here given rise to a completely new aural experience, lending the symphonically arranged cello works of Tchaikovsky and Gulda a transparency redolent of chamber music.

Felix Mendelssohn's string symphonies can be broadly split into two groups: the first six all have a three-movement structure; the movements of the first three are ordered fast-slow-fast and are thus based on the pre-Classical models. The second group of string symphonies comprises more substantial compositions. This release features no. 7 in D minor, no. 9 in C major, and no. 12 in G minor. There are several ways through these three symphonies when we hear Mendelssohn's ingenuity break fresh ground. The Bolzano String Academy was established in 1987 by the South Tyrolean Music Association under the artistic direction of Georg Egger. The string orchestra consists mainly of South Tyrolean musicians who have gained a wealth of experience in prominent chamber ensembles and orchestras at national and international level and pass on their experience in joint projects with budding young artists. The String Academy usually performs without a conductor. Some of the String Academy's members also play in the Klassische Philharmonie Stuttgart, and this connection has led to collaboration with the conductor Frieder Bernius.

The internationally distinguished guitarist Jose Fernandez Bardesio plays music from North, Central, and South America, in all its great diversity of style. Its various influences from tango, folk, jazz and Afro rhythms make this music an essential part of the guitar repertoire. His arrangement of Ginastera’s Tres Danzas Argentinas is a real challenge and an expedition to the limits of the guitar; for the bitonal first and third dances, the three bass strings are retuned. Ginastera employs guitar techniques on the piano, such as the golpe, and for this reason Bardesio’s arrangement is seen as an enrichment of the literature.

Classical Music

Alberto Hemsi (1898-1975) was born into a Jewish family in the small city of Cassaba (now Turgutlu) near Smyrna (Izmir) in what was then the Ottoman Empire. The family originated from the Italian city of Livorno and therefore had Italian citizenship. Hemsi collected 232 songs in all and used about a quarter of these for his most significant work, the collection Coplas sefardies. This monumental cycle containing in total 60 compositions for voice and piano, based on Sephardic songs, was published by Hemsi in ten volumes. The first five volumes were published in Alexandria between 1932 and 1938 and the last five from his exile in France between 1969 and 1973. Young soprano Tehila Nini Goldstein beautifully presents these pieces. Goldstein, who was born in New York but grew up in Israel, is a soloist with a passion for chamber music. Her repertoire includes classical opera as well as baroque and contemporary songs, with an special affection for Israeli music.

For a fleeting moment of eternity at the end of his life, Richard Wagner experienced the deep happiness he had been seeking throughout his life. The last words he wrote in his treatise On the Feminine in Human Nature, on February 13, 1881, were ''love - tragedy''. Although it is usually far too simplistic to interpret works of art purely in the context of biological information, several of Wagner's compositions really do have a dairy-like nature, with the character of personal revelations. One such work is the Siegfried Idyll, a symphonic overture from 1870 that Wagner wrote for his wife Cosima to remember the birth of their eldest son. Another is the song cycle Wesendonck Lieder, which Wagner wrote in stages over 1857 and 1858. Less well-known are the sonate fur das Album von Frau M.W. from 1853 and a ''musical letter'' to Mathilde, entitled Sleepless.